Using Medium as A Test Bed

I’m testing out the new blogging platform Medium, but not as a replacement for WordPress. I’m using it as my own private lab.

A few days back, one of my posts was added to the Medium frontpage, such as it were, and it got a decent amount of views compared to my prior posts that weren’t promoted by Medium. But the other day, one of my posts rocketed past that previous high water mark on its own, with only a few tweets and a Google+ post to promote it. Why? The topic.

Use Medium To Test Which Topics Might Have Appeal

Here’s one test I’m running over there: which of my not-so-typical writing topics has any kind of pull with people? Meaning, when I don’t write about business or even social media, what gets someone’s attention? Right now, far and away, the post that people resonated with the most was A System for Getting to Sleep Earlier. It got 1.2K reads within the first day or two of publishing it, versus More Productive on a Plane, which was shared on the front page, and after the first day or two, only had about 900 views (now up to 1.1K reads).

Don’t pay attention to the specific numbers. Just use the tools to gauge what’s working and what’s not. And then, from there, decide if you want to further develop any of your not-so-typical writing topics. Make sense?

But Can’t You Do This On Your Own Site?

Absolutely. On [chrisbrogan.com], I use JetPack and also Google Analytics for stats. Sometimes, I can find that certain stats or search terms are really sticking. For instance, if I wrote about blog topics for the rest of my life, according to my stats, I would be well set. But I won’t. I wrote a course on the matter, and that’s serving people well enough. How did I decide to write that course in the first place? Julien analyzed my stats and found that I probably could do something with blog topics, based on how many people seemed to want to know more.

Test Everywhere

I’ll admit that I’m not especially into testing and making all kinds of measurements, but Rob Hatch, my COO, and author of the popular newsletter, Love the Grind, is getting me more into that mindset. And oddly (to me, but not smart people like you), the more I test, the more I learn about myself.

So, maybe there’s something to this.

Chris Brogan

CEO of Owner Media Group

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